Collection

A8 PHOTOGRAPHY

Photography is a relatively new area of the collection that continues to grow. A major advance to the photography collection occurred in 1973, when funds from The Charles E. Merrill Trust were used to purchase approximately 100 important works. Photography holdings now number over 3,300, ranging from nineteenth-century works by such innovators as Anna Atkins, Eadweard Muybridge, Charles Marville, Giorgio Sommer, Charles Nègre, and Julia Margaret Cameron to masterworks by twentieth-century photography icons such as Berenice Abbott, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Alfred Stieglitz, Weegee, Edward Weston, Diane Arbus, Imogen Cunningham, Paul Caponigro, Walker Evans, Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind, Lee Friedlander, and Garry Winogrand to more contemporary work including fine examples by Cindy Sherman, Gregory Crewdson, Richard Misrach, Laurie Simmons, Larry Sultan, Joel Sternfeld, Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine, Rineke Dijkstra, Thomas Ruff, and Stephen Shore among many others. Several artists such as Margaret Bourke-White, Andreas Feininger, Siskind, Arnold Newman, Joel Meyrowitz, and Rollie McKenna are represented in depth. Strengths in the collection include portraiture and street photography. The collection continues to diversify, with recent additions by international artists and artists of color, as well vernacular photography, daguerreotypes, tintypes, and historical documentary photography.